“Soft light . . . simplifies form . . .” Which is why I prefer it for drawing and painting outdoors. I live in a region that has hard light more often than not, very intense light, thin air, low humidity. The high contrast obscures, rather than reveals, form (for me). And the illuminated sides of forms are almost bleached of color. Many artists are able to embrace this and make wonderful pictures, but I’m attracted to paintings in which the light source seems to be everywhere and nowhere in particular. So yeah, love those occasional overcast days. I would definitely be choosing to paint the second photo of the egg and shells.
Could you rephrase the first three paragraphs under hard light? I can't seem to visualize what you wrote. As always though, I do enjoy your posts and appreciate your passing your knowlege on to us.
Thanks, Diana. Here's another try at phrasing the bit about hard light..
Hard and soft have nothing to do with how bright the light is. They depend on how big the source looks from where the subject sits.
You can think about it this way. The sun covers about half a degree of sky, about the width of a pea held at arm's length. All the light arrives from that one small spot, so every part of the shadow is blocked by the same edge and the shadow comes out sharp. On an overcast day the whole sky is the source. Light arrives from all directions at once, wraps around the object, and fills the shadow from the sides. The edges get pretty soft.
The sun isn't a true point, though. That half degree of width means the shadow edge spreads about a centimeter for every meter it travels. If you hold your hand an inch above the sidewalk, you'll notice the shadow is crisp. If you raise it up to shoulder height, the edge blurs quite a bit. The shadow of a roofline on a lawn is fuzzier still.
"Look closely at the photo of the ostrich egg, and the air pores are most visible near the division between light and shadow."
I remember this from C&L, or Imaginative Realism.
I've been fighting hard over this in the illustration I'm working on.
It's a dragon, I kept with the just brilliant idea of painting each scale individually, and it has been a perpetual balancing act between rendering them each as individual "landmarks" and treating them as texture.
I ended up with the valleys between them being darker and more pronounced near the terminator.
Regarding hard light creating hard shadow, I find that, with bounce light and the sky from above, all that hard sunlight in my scene ends up with a copious amount of soft shadows either, tho.
It has been and continues to be just the most joyful game of balancing by trial and error where the light does what, exactly.
I should've listened to that one guy's book that told me to build maquettes to figure out light on forms...
That said, I do seem to notice that softened quality of the shadow (via bounce light and sky) in the hard lit egg (that would make a great band name) as well. Depending on where one looks, when not directly paying attention to the outright mirrored surroundings, the self-shadow has a somewhat soft quality to it, although it is limited by just how reflective the egg shell is.
“Soft light . . . simplifies form . . .” Which is why I prefer it for drawing and painting outdoors. I live in a region that has hard light more often than not, very intense light, thin air, low humidity. The high contrast obscures, rather than reveals, form (for me). And the illuminated sides of forms are almost bleached of color. Many artists are able to embrace this and make wonderful pictures, but I’m attracted to paintings in which the light source seems to be everywhere and nowhere in particular. So yeah, love those occasional overcast days. I would definitely be choosing to paint the second photo of the egg and shells.
Thank you so much! I do appreciate your taking time to rephrase this. Now it makes sense to my often fuzzy brain.
I’ve always struggled with this. Your last explanation was very helpful. Thank you.
Could you rephrase the first three paragraphs under hard light? I can't seem to visualize what you wrote. As always though, I do enjoy your posts and appreciate your passing your knowlege on to us.
Thanks, Diana. Here's another try at phrasing the bit about hard light..
Hard and soft have nothing to do with how bright the light is. They depend on how big the source looks from where the subject sits.
You can think about it this way. The sun covers about half a degree of sky, about the width of a pea held at arm's length. All the light arrives from that one small spot, so every part of the shadow is blocked by the same edge and the shadow comes out sharp. On an overcast day the whole sky is the source. Light arrives from all directions at once, wraps around the object, and fills the shadow from the sides. The edges get pretty soft.
The sun isn't a true point, though. That half degree of width means the shadow edge spreads about a centimeter for every meter it travels. If you hold your hand an inch above the sidewalk, you'll notice the shadow is crisp. If you raise it up to shoulder height, the edge blurs quite a bit. The shadow of a roofline on a lawn is fuzzier still.
Oh,I like the idea of holding your hand an inch above the sidewalk—-now it makes clearer sense to me.Tx…
"Look closely at the photo of the ostrich egg, and the air pores are most visible near the division between light and shadow."
I remember this from C&L, or Imaginative Realism.
I've been fighting hard over this in the illustration I'm working on.
It's a dragon, I kept with the just brilliant idea of painting each scale individually, and it has been a perpetual balancing act between rendering them each as individual "landmarks" and treating them as texture.
I ended up with the valleys between them being darker and more pronounced near the terminator.
Regarding hard light creating hard shadow, I find that, with bounce light and the sky from above, all that hard sunlight in my scene ends up with a copious amount of soft shadows either, tho.
It has been and continues to be just the most joyful game of balancing by trial and error where the light does what, exactly.
I should've listened to that one guy's book that told me to build maquettes to figure out light on forms...
That said, I do seem to notice that softened quality of the shadow (via bounce light and sky) in the hard lit egg (that would make a great band name) as well. Depending on where one looks, when not directly paying attention to the outright mirrored surroundings, the self-shadow has a somewhat soft quality to it, although it is limited by just how reflective the egg shell is.
Hard Lit Egg opens for Terminator Falloff, one night only.
Free drinks from 10 to 11 pm, but you'll have to bring your own glaze!
Thankyou